“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage.

The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued:

“Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.”

John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown.

“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage.

The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued:

“Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.”

John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown.

Not sure I agree with that one, Rat. In my mind, a conservative vote swings to a Libertarian much easier than a liberal vote would. Case in point: Ross Perot. I know he wasn't on the Libertarian ticket, but.........

According to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, she would order a “full review” of the Syrian war as her first task upon taking office, with an eye toward a “reset” of the conflict to shift focus toward attacking the Assad government and imposing regime change.

Clinton’s aide, former Pentagon chief of staff Jeremy Bash, insisted that Assad’s was a “murderous regime” and that US foreign policy would be to escalate both the war against ISIS and this new war against Assad to get both “out of there” at the same time.

Syria has been the subject of a lot of debate in the Obama Administration, with the Pentagon seeking a focus on ISIS, the CIA wanting to shift entirely to fighting Assad, and Secretary of State John Kerry negotiating a deal with Russia to expand the war to include al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Though Bash didn’t cover where the Nusra Front would fit into this, the suggestion that Clinton’s administration would escalate attacks on both seems designed to split the difference and placate hawks on both sides of the issue. The Obama Administration has already been steadily escalating the war since it began, to little effect, and Clinton’s policy would be that, just moreso.

Hang out at pro-Israel organizations during Obama’s first term and you were likely sooner or later to run into Andrew Shapiro, then an assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.

Shapiro was Clinton’s pro-Israel explainer: When tensions were ratcheting up between the Obama and Netanyahu governments, Shapiro was among the first to master the original “unprecedented aid” pitch, offering facts and figures on the level of military assistance the Obama administration was delivering to Israel.

“I am proud to say that this administration has taken steps to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship and preserve it in a new century and era of dramatic change,” he told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in November 2011.

“As a result of the Obama Administration’s commitment, our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper and more intense than ever before,” he said. “Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that the security cooperation between our two countries is ‘unprecedented.’ In fact, I believe that no American administration has done as much as ours for Israel’s security.”

Shapiro, 48, who studied international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and then Columbia University, is an old Clinton hand, having worked for her when she was senator from New York as a senior foreign policy adviser. In “Hard Choices,” she credits him with helping to secure Israel’s access to F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets.

In Obama’s second term, Shapiro left government and established a foreign policy strategic consultancy, Beacon Global Strategies, with two other Obama administration alumni, Jeremy Bash, a top Pentagon official and the son of a Washington area rabbi, and Philippe Reines, one of Clinton’s closest advisers when she was secretary of state.

On the next post I’ll get into deep background on how Israeli policy for regime changes in the Middle East became the disastrous US policy of regime change which has resulted in the deaths of millions, the cost of trillions and years of waste and damage. Not one benefit has come to the US ordinary citizen from this catastrophic foreign policy blunder: yet Clinton is still not done with it.

We will have a close look at Zalmay Khalilzad in light of a 1996 paper prepared for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies:

In addition to “weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria,” Israel should “focus on removing Saddam Hussain from power in Iraq—an important Israeli objective in its own right.” These recommendations were contained in a 1996 paper prepared for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The paper’s authors included the current Under Secretary for Defense Policy and chair of the Defense Policy Board, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, respectively.

Perle whet his neo-conservative whistle under Albert Wohlstetter, a University of Chicago mathematician who was key in drawing up the Pentagon’s strategic and nuclear blueprints during the Cold War. That same Wohlstetter mentored many of the Bush administration’s reigning neoconservatives, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the most pro-Zionist of the so-called chickenhawks, and Zalmay Khalilzad.

More importantly, perhaps, Khalilzad’s impeccable credentials make him a natural for membership in the neo-conservatives cabal which is the driving force behind Washington’s Iraq policy. “He has a narrow view of the Middle East and South Asia,” his former associate stressed. “[Zalmay thinks of] security to the exclusion of everything else. He tends to look at military solutions as the first, not the last policy option.”

Such views may not have been inculcated during his education at the elitist Ghazi Lycée school in Kabul, where his father worked as an adviser to the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, or at the American University of Beirut in the early 1970s.

His hawkish views most likely were formed at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Wohlstetter. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1979, Khalilzad taught political science at Columbia University, where he worked with Zbigniew Brzezinsky, the Carter administration’s architect of the policy supporting the Afghan mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1984 Khalilzad accepted a one-year fellowship to join the State Department, where he worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then the director of Policy Planning. His fellowship turned into a full-time position that extended through the Reagan administration.

Meanwhile, in Berniezuela, the 'Revolution' continues to march straight downhill to the forced labor stage of social progress -

Venezuela’s socialist government adopts forced labor law

posted at 4:01 pm on July 29, 2016 by John Sexton

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has a plan to “guarantee food supply, social justice, and democracy.” As with most of Maduro’s plans, it will accomplish none of those things. Vice News reports:

“A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday.

President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order “all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how” to join a government drive aimed at increasing food production.

They can be required to work in the agricultural sector for a 60-day period that can be extended for another 60 days “if the circumstances require it.”

Naturally, Maduro continues to blame the dire circumstances of his country on an economic war brought against him by the Unites States. He’s been saying that for months and even suggesting on occasion that the U.S. was ready to invade.

The reality here is much simpler: socialism has been a disaster for Venezuela. The latest attempt at central economic planning is reminiscent of the Soviet Unions five year plans in the 1920s and 1930s. The difference here is that Venezuela is working on 60-day plans because, with inflation already in the triple-digits, it’s hard to imagine how the country could continue for another five years unless something changes.

One survey found that about half of Venezuelans can no longer afford to eat 3 meals a day. Dumpster diving for food, food riots and cross-border grocery shopping have become facts of life in the country. Today the BBC published a story explaining just how dire the hunger situation in Venezuela has become:

Travelling through the country this month I saw endless queues of people trying to buy food – any food – at supermarkets and other government-run shops.

I was stopped at a roadblock in the middle of the countryside by people who said they had eaten nothing but mangoes for three days.

I saw the hopeless expression of a mother, who had been eating so little that she was no longer able to breastfeed her baby…

“We’ve always been poor here, that’s true, but we’ve never been hungry,” said Zulay Florido, a community leader in her 50s.

“Since (President) Maduro took power we are in a very bad situation. We call it here ‘the Maduro diet’.

Venezuela’s socialist are holding an entire nation hostage, effectively threatening to let them starve rather than relinquish power.

Bob Thu May 27, 12:52:00 AM EDTBut I did rip off the bank for $7500 hundred dollars, when I was on my knees, and fighting for my economic life, on my aunt's credit card. But that wasn't really stealing, just payback.

(Don't buy into anything crapper says, folks. He has been diagnosed as mentally ill by about 3/4 of the commentators here. Quirk's diagnosis was the best, the most complete. Just scroll on by the crapper.....)

The bloodthirsty jihadist who executed a Catholic priest in France “easily” passed a background check to become an airport baggage handler, according to a report.

Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19, worked full time at Chambéry Airport in the Savoie region, which is used by more than 250,000 passengers a year, until just three months ago, the Evening Standard reported.

He began working at the airport as a porter in December after completing his studies at the Lycée Marlioz, a high school in his hometown of Aix-les-Bains.Modal Trigger85-year-old French priest Jacques Hamel was slain in the terror attack.Photo: Getty Images

“Petitjean had no trouble getting through a police investigation and psychological evaluation,” a source told the paper.

Iraqi government forces drive their armoured vehicles during an operation, backed by air support from the US-led coalition, in Fallujah's southern Shuhada neighbourhood to retake the area from the Islamic State (IS) group on June 15, 2016.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye—AFP/Getty Images

Iraqi government forces drive their armoured vehicles during an operation, backed by air support from the US-led coalition, in Fallujah's southern Shuhada neighbourhood to retake the area from the Islamic State (IS) group on June 15, 2016.

Pfeifle was the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and global outreach during the surge in Iraq from 2007 to 2009

We must start by seeing Iraq for what it is and not what we want it to be.

Joe Biden, it seems, was ahead of his time.

In May 2006, then-Sen. Biden and foreign policy writer Leslie Gelb proposed a plan to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions along sectarian lines. At the time, many dismissed and derided the proposal. Now, a long, deadly decade later, the next American president would be wise to embrace it.

Of course, 10 years ago, the Biden plan would have failed. It was built on a theory that didn’t fit the harsh realities on the ground. The country needed the 2007 surge—increased troops, intelligence and diplomacy brought unparalleled security. Then, the vacuum created after the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops led to enormous global insecurity with the creation of ISIS.

One of the many foreign policy challenges the next president will inherit is what to do about Iraq....

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.